This was bought for me as a present, what a fantastic present, a Moore & Wright dial test indicator and a homemade stand. Must admit that I’ve been staring at it for a number of weeks thinking about how I’m going to make a mounting system for it so that I can use it in the lathe.
The indicator comes in a neat box with some basic instructions and with two posts that mount onto the dovetails on the instrument body.
This means I need a stand/structure to attach it to my lathe.
A peek at the finished article so that you can see what I’m thinking of…
The dial gauge itself is available from Machine DRO.
I started with 1/2″ x 3/8″ section mild steel and cut three lengths: 80mm, 55mm and 50mm (as machined and finished).
The black marking is permanent marker as this is a quick easy alternative to engineers blue.
The ends were accurately drilled to accept 4mm bolts and then rounded. This gave an articulated joint.
The longer bar is designed to be held where a cutting tool is held, the two shorter bars articulate to get the indicator to the correct position. I machined slots through the two shorter bars to lighten them.
I then cleaned the bars thoroughly and coated them with gun blue.
The final set of parts and bolts. Difficult to see, but the bar on the right has 2x 4mm diameter holes to accept the locating pin from the dial indicator. A slot was also cut between these two holes so that a 3mm bolt could be used to lock the pin in place.
Using the different locations of the dovetails on the dial and the round pin it is possible to get a number of locations for the dial – this gives quite a high degree of flexibility.
One use for the dial gauge is checking and aligning the backplate for a chuck.
Here we are refitting the lathe with a new 3-jaw Soba Chuck.
Dialing in the rear wheel rim of the miniature traction engine. This was required due to the fact that the wheel rims were machined in stages.
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